There is a significant need for high brightness broad band illumination sources to provide optical fiber coupled illumination for surgical endoscopy and other applications where extremely high brightness sources are needed such as in projection systems and high speed industrial inspection. Prior art typically utilize short arc lamps such as high pressure mercury, metal halide, and xenon. These lamps are capable of very high luminous emittance and are therefore suitable sources for the etendue limited fiber optic coupled illumination systems. Approximately 85% of the high brightness illumination sources in use in the operating room today are based on compact short arc xenon lamps. The problems associated with these lamp technologies, however, include poor luminous efficacy thereby requiring high power and associated means of cooling, short lifetime, high voltage operation (typically kilovolts required to turn them on), high cost, and use of mercury which is becoming an environmental hazard and is in the process of undergoing regulations in numerous countries throughout the world.
Only recently has there been recognition that Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) may provide sufficient illumination to be used to replace more traditional light sources in endoscopic illumination systems. In particular, LEDs provide much improved lifetime, lower cost of ownership, lower power consumption (enabling some battery operated portable devices), decreased cooling requirements, and freedom form mercury relative to conventional arc lamps. Additionally they can be readily modulated which can be a significant advantage in many applications. To date no LED based endoscopic illumination system commercially exists that equals or exceeds the luminous intensity of the compact xenon arc lamp systems. The invention described herein has the potential of meeting and exceeding the output of the best arc lamps systems available today